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According to different sources, the term slacker dates back to about 1790 or 1898.[1][citation needed] It gained some recognition during the BritishGezira Scheme in the early to mid 20th century, when Sudanese labourers protested their relative powerlessness by working lethargically, a form of protest known as "slacking".[2][3]

In the United States during World War I, the word "slacker" was commonly used to describe someone who was not participating in the war effort, especially someone who avoided military service, an equivalent of the later term draft dodger. Attempts to track down such evaders were called slacker raids.[4] During World War I, U.S. Senator Miles Poindexter discussed whether inquiries "to separate the cowards and the slackers from those who had not violated the draft" had been managed properly. A San Francisco Chronicle headline on September 7, 1918, read: "Slacker is Doused in Barrel of Paint".[5][6] The term was also used during the World War II period in the United States. In 1940, Time quoted the U.S. Army on managing the military draft efficiently: "War is not going to wait while every slacker resorts to endless appeals."[7]

The shift in the use of "slacker" from its draft-related meaning to a more general sense of the avoidance of work is unclear. In April 1948, The New Republic referred to "resentment against taxes levied to aid slackers".[8]

The term achieved renewed popularity following its use in the 1985 film Back to the Future in which James Tolkan's character Mr. Strickland says "You've got a real attitude problem, McFly. You're a slacker! You remind me of your father when he went here. He was a slacker, too."[9] It gained subsequent exposure from the 1989 Superchunk single "Slack Motherfucker", and in the 1991 film Slacker.[10]Slacker became widely used in the 1990s to refer to a subset of apathetic youth who were cynical and uninterested in political or social causes.

The term has connotations of "apathy and aimlessness".[11] It is also used to refer to an educated person who avoids work, possibly as an anti-materialist stance, who may be viewed as an underachiever.[10]

In the television show Regular Show, a pair of groundskeepers consisting of a blue jay named Mordecai and a raccoon named Rigby avoid doing work at all costs. Their boss, an angry gumball machine named Benson usually calls them "worthless, lazy slackers".